Beginning in the 7th millennium BC, human
populations moved into the Chadian basin in great numbers. By the
end of the 1st millennium BC, a series of states and empires rose
and fell in Chad's Sahelian strip, each focused on controlling the
trans-Saharan
trade routes that passed through the region. France conquered the
territory by 1920 and incorporated it as part of French
Equatorial Africa. In 1960 Chad obtained independence under the
leadership of François
Tombalbaye. Resentment towards his policies in the Muslim north
culminated in the eruption of a long-lasting
civil war in 1965. In 1979
the rebels conquered the capital and put an end to the south's
hegemony. However, the rebel commanders fought amongst themselves
until Hissène
Habré defeated his rivals. He was overthrown in 1990 by his
general Idriss
Déby. Recently, the Darfur
crisis in Sudan has spilt over the border and
destabilised the nation, with hundreds of thousands of Sudanese
refugees living in and around camps in eastern Chad.

History

In the 7th millennium BC, ecological conditions in
the northern half of Chadian territory favored human settlement,
and the region experienced a strong population increase. Some of
the most important African
archaeological sites are found in Chad, mainly in the Borkou-Ennedi-Tibesti
Region; some date to earlier than 2,000 BC. For more than 2000
years, the Chadian Basin has been inhabited by agricultural and
sedentary peoples. The region became a crossroads of civilizations.
The earliest of these were the legendary Sao,
known from artifacts and oral histories. The Sao fell to the
Kanem
Empire, the first and longest-lasting of the empires that
developed in Chad's Sahelian strip by the
end of the 1st millennium AD. The power of Kanem and its successors
was based on control of the trans-Saharan
trade routes that passed through the region.

French
colonial expansion led to the creation of the in 1900. By 1920,
France had secured full control of the colony and incorporated it
as part of French
Equatorial Africa. French rule in
Chad was characterised by an absence of policies to unify the
territory and sluggish modernisation. The French primarily viewed
the colony as an unimportant source of untrained labour and raw
cotton; France introduced large-scale cotton production in 1929.
The colonial administration in Chad was critically understaffed and
had to rely on the dregs of the French civil service. Only the
south was governed effectively; French presence in the north and
east was nominal. The educational system suffered from this
neglect. After World War
II, France granted Chad the status of
overseas territory and its inhabitants the right to elect
representatives to the
French National Assembly and a
Chadian assembly. The largest political party was the Chadian
Progressive Party (PPT), based in the southern half of the
colony. Chad was granted independence on August 111960 with the
PPT's leader, François
Tombalbaye, as its first president.

Two years later, Tombalbaye banned opposition
parties and established a one-party system. Tombalbaye's autocratic
rule and insensitive mismanagement exacerbated interethnic
tensions. In 1965 Muslims began a
civil war. Tombalbaye was overthrown
and killed in 1975, but the insurgency continued. In 1979 the
rebel factions conquered the capital, and all central authority in
the country collapsed. Armed factions, many from the north's
rebellion, contended for power. The disintegration of Chad caused
the collapse of France's position in the country. Libya moved to fill
the power vacuum and became involved
in Chad's civil war. Libya's adventure ended in
disaster in 1987; the French-supported president, Hissène
Habré, evoked a united response from Chadians of a kind never
seen before and forced the Libyan army off Chadian soil.

Habré consolidated his dictatorship through a
power system that relied on corruption and violence; an estimated
40,000 people were killed under his rule. The president favoured
his own Daza
ethnic group and discriminated against his former allies, the
Zaghawa.
His general, Idriss
Déby, overthrew him in 1990.

In 2006 and
in 2008 rebel forces have attempted to take the capital by
force, but have on both circumstances failed.

Politics and government

seealso
Foreign relations of Chad Chad's constitution provides for a
strong executive branch headed by a president who dominates the
political system. The president has the power to appoint the
prime
minister and the cabinet, and exercises considerable influence
over appointments of judges, generals, provincial officials and
heads of Chad's para-statal firms. In cases of grave and immediate
threat, the president, in consultation with the
National Assembly, may declare a state of
emergency. The president is directly
elected by popular vote for a five-year term; in 2005
constitutional term limits were removed. This removal allows a
president to remain in power beyond the previous two-term limit.
Corruption is rife at all levels; Transparency
International's
Corruption Perceptions Index for 2005 named Chad the most
corrupt country in the world, and it has fared only slightly better
in the following years. In 2007, it scored 1.8 out of 10 on the
Corruption Perceptions Index (with 10 being the least corrupt).
Only Tonga,
Uzbekistan,
Haiti,
Iraq, Myanmar, and Somalia scored
lower. Critics of President Déby have accused him of cronyism and
tribalism.

Chad's legal system is based on French civil
law and Chadian customary law where the latter does not
interfere with public order or constitutional guarantees of
equality. Despite the constitution's guarantee of judicial
independence, the president names most key judicial officials. The
legal system's highest jurisdictions, the Supreme
Court and the
Constitutional Council, have become fully operational since
2000. The Supreme Court is made up of a chief justice, named by the
president, and 15 councillors, appointed for life by the president
and the National Assembly. The Constitutional Court is headed by
nine judges elected to nine-year terms. It has the power to review
legislation, treaties and international agreements prior to their
adoption. In 2005, opposition parties and human rights
organisations supported the boycott of the constitutional
referendum that allowed Déby to stand for re-election for a third
term amid reports of widespread irregularities in voter
registration and government censorship of independent media outlets
during the campaign. Correspondents judged the 2006 presidential
elections a mere formality, as the opposition deemed the polls a
farce and boycotted.

Déby faces armed opposition from groups who are
deeply divided by leadership clashes but united in their intention
to overthrow him. These forces stormed
the capital on April 132006, but were
ultimately repelled. Chad's greatest foreign influence is France,
which maintains 1,000 troops in the country. Déby relies on the
French to help repel the rebels, and France gives the Chadian
army logistical and intelligence support for fear of a complete
collapse of regional stability. Nevertheless, Franco-Chadian
relations were soured by the granting of oil drilling rights to the
American Exxon company in
1999.

Educators
face considerable challenges due to the nation's dispersed
population and a certain degree of reluctance on the part of
parents to send their children to school. Although attendance is
compulsory, only 68% of boys continue past primary school, and more
than half of the population is illiterate. Higher education is
provided at the University
of N'Djamena.

In February 2008 in the aftermath of the
battle of N'Djamena, UN
Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs
John Holmes expressed "extreme concern" that the crisis would
have a negative effect on the ability of humanitarians to deliver
life-saving assistance to half a million beneficiaries, most of
whom - according to him - heavily rely on humanitarian aid for
their survival. UN
spokesperson Maurizio
Giuliano stated to The
Washington Post: "If we do not manage to provide aid at
sufficient levels, the humanitarian crisis might become a
humanitarian catastrophe".

Regions, departments, and sub-prefectures

Chad is divided
into 18
regions. This system came about in 2003 as part of the
decentralisation process, when the government abolished the
previous 14
prefectures. Each region is headed by a presidentially
appointed governor. Prefects administer the 50
departments within the regions. The departments are divided
into 200
sub-prefectures, which are in turn composed of 446 cantons. The
cantons are scheduled to be replaced by communautés rurales, but
the legal and regulatory framework has not yet been completed. The
constitution provides for decentralised government to compel local
populations to play an active role in their own development. To
this end, the constitution declares that each administrative
subdivisions be governed by elected local assemblies, but no local
elections have taken place, and communal elections scheduled for
2005 have been repeatedly postponed.

Geography

At , Chad is the world's
21st-largest country. It is slightly smaller than Peru and slightly
larger than South
Africa. Chad is in north central Africa, lying between 8° and
24° north and between 14° and 24° east. Chad is bounded to the
north by Libya, to the east by Sudan, to the west by Niger, Nigeria
and Cameroon, and to the south by the Central African Republic. The
country's capital is from the nearest seaport. Due to this distance
from the sea and the country's largely desert climate, Chad is sometimes
referred to as the "Dead Heart of Africa".

A heritage of the colonial era, Chad's borders do
not coincide wholly with natural boundaries. The dominant physical
structure is a wide basin bounded to the north, east and south by
mountain ranges. Lake Chad,
after which the country is named, is the remains of an immense lake
that occupied of the Chadian Basin 7,000 years ago. the lake is
Africa's second largest wetland. The Emi Koussi, a
dormant volcano in the Tibesti
Mountains that reaches 3,414 metres
(13,435 ft) above sea level, is the highest point in Chad
and the Sahara.

Each year a tropical weather system known as the
intertropical front crosses Chad from south to north, bringing
a wet
season that lasts from May to October in the south, and from
June to September in the Sahel. Variations in local rainfall create
three major geographical zones. The Sahara lies in the country's
northern third. Yearly precipitations there are under ; in fact,
Borkou in
Chad is the most arid area of the Sahara. Vegetation throughout
this belt is scarce; only the occasional spontaneous palm grove
survives, the only ones to do so south of the Tropic of
Cancer. The Sahara gives way to a Sahelian belt in
Chad's centre; precipitation there varies from 300 mm to 600 mm
(12–24 in) per year. In the Sahel a steppe of
thorny bushes (mostly acacias) gradually gives way to a
savanna in Chad's
Sudanese
zone to the south. Yearly rainfall in this belt is over .

Economy and infrastructure

The United Nations' Human
Development Index ranks Chad as the fifth poorest country in
the world, with 80% of the population living below the poverty
line. The GDP
(PPP)
per capita was estimated as US$1,500
in 2005. Chad is part of the
Bank of Central African States and the
Customs and Economic Union of Central Africa (UDEAC). Its
currency is the
CFA franc. Years of civil war have scared away foreign
investors; those who left Chad between 1979 and 1982 have only
recently begun to regain confidence in the country's future. In
2000 major direct foreign investment in the oil sector began,
boosting the country's economic prospects. Cotton remains a primary
export, although exact figures are not available. Rehabilitation of
Cotontchad, a
major cotton company that suffered from a decline in world cotton
prices, has been financed by France, the Netherlands, the European
Union, and the
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD).
The parastatal is now
expected to be privatised.

Civil war crippled the development of transport
infrastructure; in 1987, Chad had only of paved roads.
Successive road rehabilitation projects improved the network to by
2004. Nevertheless, the road network is limited; roads are often
unusable for several months of the year. With no railways of its
own, Chad depends heavily on Cameroon's rail system for the
transport of Chadian exports and imports to and from the seaport of
Douala. An
international airport serves the capital and provides regular
direct flights to Paris and several African cities. The telecommunication
system is basic and expensive, with fixed telephone services
provided by the state telephone company SotelTchad. Only
14,000 fixed telephone lines serve all of Chad, one of the lowest
telephone density rates in the world. Chad's energy sector has
suffered from years of mismanagement by the parastatal
Chad Water and Electric Society (STEE), which provides power
for 15% of the capital's citizens and covers only 1.5% of the
national population. Most Chadians burn biomass fuels such as wood
and animal manure for power. Chad's cities face serious
difficulties of municipal infrastructure; only 48% of urban
residents have access to potable water and only 2% to basic
sanitation.

The country's television audience is limited to
N'Djamena. The only television station is the state-owned TeleTchad. Radio
has a far greater reach, with 13 private radio stations. Newspapers
are limited in quantity and distribution, and circulation figures
are small due to transportation costs, low literacy rates, and
poverty.

Demographics

2005 estimates place Chad's population at
10,146,000; 25.8% live in urban areas and 74.8% in rural ones. The
country's population is young: an estimated 47.3% is under 15. The
birth rate is estimated at 42.35 births per 1,000 people, the
mortality rate at 16.69. The life expectancy is 47.2 years. Urban
life is virtually restricted to the capital, whose population is
mostly engaged in commerce. The other major towns are Sarh, Moundou, Abéché and
Doba, which
are less urbanised but are growing rapidly and joining the capital
as decisive factors in economic growth. displaced by the civil war
in the east, this has generated increased tensions among the
region's communities.

Polygamy is
common, with 39% of women living in such unions. This is sanctioned
by law, which automatically permits polygamy unless spouses specify
that this is unacceptable upon marriage. Although violence against
women is prohibited, domestic violence is common. Female
genital mutilation is prohibited, but the practice is
widespread and deeply rooted in tradition; 45% of Chadian women
undergo the procedure, with the highest rates among Arabs, Hadjarai, and
Ouaddaians (90% or more). Lower percentages were reported among the
Sara
(38%) and the Toubou (2%). Women
lack equal opportunities in education and training, making it
difficult for them to compete for the relatively few formal-sector
jobs. Although property and inheritance laws based on the French
code do not discriminate against women, local leaders adjudicate
most inheritance cases in favour of men, according to traditional
practice.